Clem Eischen remembers fondly the best track and field team he coached at Hudson’s Bay High School — the 1961 team that won the state high school team championship without scoring a single point in a track event.
This is the story from the 1961 meet.
Hudson’s Bay climaxed its greatest track season by winning the state high school meet Friday and Saturday at Pullman. Coach Clem Eischen’s proteges scored 34 points to nose out Eisenhower of Yakima by 3 2/3 points.
The Eagles won the meet despite the fact that their crack 880-yard relay team failed to finish in the money. Both Hudson’s Bay and Eisenhower relay teams were victims of congested conditions on the third leg of the race. Aden Hayes was bumped clear out of contention, as was the Eisenhower runner.
Eischen, Hudson’s Bay coach, said that there were so many runners bumped around at this point in the race that the judges couldn’t determine who was responsible and no team was disqualified.
Eisenhower went into the final event of the day the needing to pick up three points more than the Eagles could score in the 880-yard relay. If the Eagles failed to place, Eisenhower had to finish fourth or better, or beat the Eagles by two places. When both were bumped out of contention on the third leg of the race, it left the Eagles a certain meet winner.
Hudson’s Bay won the meet with a first place in the discus throw, a tie for first in the high jump, a second and a fourth in the shot put, and a fourth place in the broad jump.
Dave Davies of Hudson’s Bay repeated as state discus throw champion, though he failed to better his own state meet record of 167 feet, 9 inches set last year. His best throw this year came in the preliminaries Friday with a toss of 163 feet even.
Davies also placed second to Jock McLaughlin of Lake Washington in the shot put. McLaughlin won with a put of 60 feet, 1/4 inch, Davies was out 57 feet, 4 1/2 inches.
Bo Demme of the Bay earned a tie for first place in the high jump with a leap of six feet, three inches. He tied with the favorite Bob Lambert of Lake Washington and Bob Chelin of Shoreline. Demme also contributed a vital four points with a fourth-place finish in the shot put at 54 feet, 103/4 inches. Both Demme and Davies also had their best shot put efforts in the preliminaries.
Pat Hawes was in sixth place in the broad jump at the conclusion of the preliminaries Friday with a leap of 20 feet, 10 inches. He climbed into fourth place Saturday with a jump of 21 feet, 10 inches.
Al Pemberton of Ridgefield just barely qualified for the finals in the discus throw with a toss of a little better than 146 feet. He boosted this to 157 feet Saturday to finish third. Al Winter of Eisenhower surprised with a 150-foot toss on Saturday to finish second to Davies.
Dick Maw of Fort Vancouver beat Tony Pasckavale of Aberdeen, district high hurdle champion, but still had to settle for a fifth place at the state meet in the event. Maw was fourth in his qualifying heat race Friday and fifth in the finals.
Four new state meet records were established and one other tied.
Paul Schlicke of Gonzaga in Spokane sped four times around the quarter-mile track in four minutes, 19.3 seconds to wipe out the old mile run record of 4:24.3 set by Bill Colwell of Lewis and Clark (Spokane) in 1955.
Tom Gilpin of Snohomish put a new half-mile run record on the books as he won going away from a fast field in one minute, 55.2 seconds. The old record of 1:55.9 was set in 1960 by Bill Pratt of Wenatchee.
Howard Dowdell of Evergreen (Seattle) won the 440-yard dash finals in 48.3 seconds, but this was just a shade under his record time of 48.2 seconds set in the preliminaries Friday. The old record of 48.5 seconds was by Ken Emanuels of Bellevue in 1959.
Lewis & Clark (Spokane) cut the mile relay record down to 3 minutes, 26.9 seconds. This was a new event last year.
Steve Brown of Eisenhower had to tie the 100-yard dash record of 9.8 seconds to beat a strong field of sprinters. The record was originally set way back in 1925 by Wes Foster of Wenatchee and since not even tied until Saturday.
William Nettles, who won the district pole vault crown for Hudson’s Bay, cleared the bar at 12 feet again, but this wasn’t enough to put him among the nine vaulters who shared points here. Dennis Peacocke of West Seattle won the pole vault with a vault of 13 feet, 7 inches.
Duane Roberts of Hudson’s Bay was far below his usual form as he failed to qualify for the finals in the 880-yard run. He was clocked in 2:05 as he ran out of the money in the prelims Friday.
Gary Langhans, Aberdeen sophomore, was just nosed out of first place in the 100-yard dash by Steven Brown of Eisenhower, who won both the century and furlong dashes. Langhans had to settle for sixth place in the 200, though.
Tony Pasckavale of Aberdeen was far off the for he showed in the record breaking efforts in the district meet. He failed to qualify for the finals in the low hurdles and finished sixth behind Maw of the Fort in the highs.
Hoquiam start quarter-miler Rick Van Zandt let the leaders get to far ahead of him and finished fifth in the record-breaking quarter.
Pat Hawes failed to qualify for the finals in the 220 when the best he could do was 22.5 Friday.
Written in the May 29, 1961 edition of The Columbian.
